Tessa Blake WTC Report

Tessa Blake 9/16/2001

received 9/16/2001

Also, mending. Ian and I looked at our movie for a few hours and watched someone else's (Lisa Picard is Famous). Being in the office, getting lunch across the street, hailing a cab, there was a memory, a reflex from a previous life. Like a sleepy limb coming back to feeling. And I can't say that it was a good feeling exactly. Only odd and awkward and familiar. But just as we rounded the corner from the movie in quest of sushi like good bourgeois New Yorkers, we saw the cover of the Post, which proclaims in red 22 pt. type, WAR.

I have spent the last few sleepless hours reading smart magazines (one of which was smart enough to print Michelle!!!) and thinking about the bigger picture. What do we do as a nation? As individuals? Ian and I have begun to discuss in serious and practical terms, what we will do if things escalate. Should we stay? Should we leave? If we leave, where would we go? Who could/would come with us? How would we travel? What skills should we acquire either way?

And these discussions are not hysterical. But it feels so absurd to have a real conversation about the possibility of actual war that I giggle occasionally and feel like a melodramatic preteen at a post-pillow fight slumber party turned maudlin.

A dear friend of mine had a 7 lbs. baby girl today (3 weeks early) named Nora Rose Draper. We are going to the shower tomorrow even though they will still be in the hospital, because we are desperate to be in a room together, to see each other and touch each other, to laugh and celebrate a brand new life in the face of so much death.

The photos of the missing posted on telephone booths across the city -- young women in bridal gowns, strapping tan men on vacation -- is almost too much to bare. Living a life, not living a life -- none of it makes much sense. I am pretty muddled. And I am really tired. And I keep not sleeping. But I am giving it another try...

I love you all.

t.